THE MYTHOLOGY OF IMPERIALISM
A Revolutionary Critique of British Literature and Socity in the Modern Age
bySinead Kennedy
Socialist Review, October 2009

By critiquing four well-known British writers - Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, D H Lawrence, E M Forster - and the Irishman Joyce Cary, author Jonah Raskin forces us to look more deeply at the received wisdom of the great books of Western civilisation. All of these writers are shown in one way or another to have supported, often in contradictory ways, the project of imperialism. Raskin's real strength as a critic is that he deplores their racism without dismissing their work and indeed takes real pleasure in the writers' quest to make sense of the world.